In this post, I’ll guide you through Azure CDN and how you can leverage it in practice.
What is an Azure Content Delivery Network?
The Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a geographically distributed compute cluster that works together to deliver internet content quickly. A CDN allows for the speedy distribution of materials necessary for Internet content loading, such as HTML pages, images, videos, etc. A correct configured Azure CDN service may also help websites defend against common malicious attacks such as Distributed Denial of Service Attacks (DDoS).
Prerequisites
- An active Azure Subscription
Pre-deployed Azure Resources
- An Azure Windows VM with IIS enabled : Deploy applications to a Windows virtual machine in Azure with the Custom Script Extension
- Azure NSG Inbound port rules for 80,443 ports : Create, change, or delete a network security group
Steps to create an Azure CDN profile
1. Sign in to the Azure Portal
2. Search for “CDN” and click the Create button.
3. On the CDN profile page, on the tab Basics fill in the required values as the image below,
| Setting | Value |
| Subscription | Select a valid Azure subscription |
| Resource group | Create or Select an existing resource group |
| Name | Type a name for the CDN profile |
| Region | Select Global |
| Pricing tier* | Select Standard Microsoft |
| Endpoint settings | |
| Create a new CDN endpoint | mark the tickbox |
| CDN endpoint name | Type a unique endpoint name |
| Origin type | Select Custom origin |
| Origin hostname | Type the origin hostname. For demo purposes, I use the Azure VM Public IP. |
* Comparisons between Azure CDN product features
4. The endpoint has propagated, and the status has changed to “running” in the Endpoints list a few minutes ago.
In the table below, you can see the propagation time for each CDN product.
| Azure CDN products | Propagation time |
| Standard Akamai | One minute |
| Standard Microsoft | Ten minutes |
| Standard Verizon | Thirty minutes |
| Premium Verizon | Thirty minutes |
Test the CDN profile
The video below shows how the Azure CDN profile works as expected.